Little Girl Gone - Brett Battles

The thing was, it was part of his old life, back from when he’d been on the road all the time, before his ex-wife had walked out on him, and when his best friend had still been alive. He kept the bag pre-packed with things he knew he would always need: a couple of changes of clothes, paper, pens, batteries, passport, toiletries, and a few other odds and ends that had always come in handy. And though he hadn’t gone anywhere since moving back to Cambria, the bag sat ready to go if he ever needed it.

Stay, a voice in the very back of his mind said. Let someone else find her. You’ll just screw it up. Better to stay. Better to keep to your routine.

A year ago, that voice would have won out, maybe even six months ago, or three, or perhaps one. But when he grabbed the bag, he realized the balance had tipped at some point, even if just a bit. What that meant, who knew? Before he could dwell on it, he stuffed his laptop in the bag, and headed out to his car.

It took him forty minutes to reach the 101 highway. Once he was cruising south, he pulled out the picture of Elyse that Tooney had given him at his dad’s house. It was a high school graduation shot, so a couple of years old, but Tooney had said she looked the same. She had a warm smile, and intelligent, caring eyes, and was cute in that geeky, Comic-Con kind of way. She’d never be elected homecoming queen, but fanboys would have done whatever she asked if it meant they could hang out with her.

“So where are you?” he asked.

Not surprisingly, the picture didn’t answer.

He reached the outskirts of L.A. just after 10 p.m., but didn’t pull up in front of the apartment Elyse shared with three other students until a few minutes before eleven. It was located in Westchester, near the Los Angeles International Airport. Tooney had told Logan Elyse was attending Otis College of Design, less than a mile away, where she was studying to become a motion graphics designer. He wasn’t completely sure what that meant, and neither was Logan, but it probably wasn’t important.

As he climbed out of the car, it didn’t even dawn on him that he’d been up for nineteen hours already. He was focused on Elyse. He wanted to find her quickly, and set Tooney’s mind at ease before something could go wrong. Hopefully, she was just sitting in her living room, having totally forgotten today was the day she’d promised to visit her grandfather. As for the phone, Logan could think of a dozen reasons why she hadn’t answered it.

Her apartment was in an older, two-story building with outside walkways and staircases. A quick glance at the numbers on a couple of the first floor doors told him her place, number 17, had to be up the stairs.

The doors to each of the second floor apartments opened onto the walkway. On either side of the doors were windows. Most of them had their curtains pulled shut. But while a few of the apartments were dark, the majority had at least some lights on.

He found number 17 near the back, just beyond an apartment where a TV was on and several people were laughing. The curtains were drawn across the windows of Elyse’s place, but the lights were on, leading Logan to think someone might be home and awake.

He pushed the button for the doorbell, and waited. When no one answered after half a minute, he pushed it again, and added a knock this time.

Nothing.

Tooney had said it was spring break. What if all four of the girls who lived there had gone out of town, and the last one out had forgotten to turn the lights off? It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that had ever happened.

Before he’d gotten out of the car, he’d slipped the small notebook from his bag into his pocket just in case something like this happened. He ripped out a sheet, and wrote a note asking whoever got it to give him a call regarding Elyse. He then stuck it in the crack between the door and the jamb, just above the knob.

As he started to leave, a guy stepped onto the walkway from the neighboring apartment where the TV was on. Tall and lean, and dressed in a pair of plaid shorts and a green T-shirt, Logan pegged him as another student.

When the guy saw Logan, he said, “Sorry, man. We’ll try to hold it down.” He looked back at his apartment. “Hey, turn the volume down!” The sound from the TV dipped.

“Play it as loud as you want. I don’t really care,” Logan told him.

The kid took a longer look at him. “Oh. Thought you were the guy from downstairs. Don’t think he likes us very much.”

Logan gestured down the walkway. “I was looking for your neighbors in number seventeen, but no one’s home. Do you know if they’re still in town, or have they all gone away for the break?”

The guy stepped back into the doorway of the apartment. “Angie, someone wants to talk to you.”

“Me?” a girl inside said.

“Yeah, you.” He looked back at Logan. “You want Angie, right?”

“Yes. Angie.”

A few seconds later a short, blonde girl wearing sweats and holding a bottle of beer, joined the guy in the doorway.

“I don’t know you,” she said.

“No, you don’t,” Logan replied. “I’m here about your roommate.”

“Which one?”

“Elyse Myat.” Tooney had said native Burmese didn’t have last names. So Elyse’s parents had decided to stick with the one Tooney had taken when he’d moved to the States. Logan could tell there’d been more to it than that, but that was all Tooney had said.

The girl hesitated for a moment, then her eyes narrowed. “What about Elyse?”

As if mirroring her, the look on the face of the tall kid beside her grew suddenly serious.

“Maybe we could talk alone for a moment?” Logan suggested.

“I don’t think so.”

“I’m only trying to find her.”

“Well, you’re not going to find her here,” the guy told Logan, drawing to his full height. “Now I think maybe you should just leave.”

It had been a few years, but Logan had taken down men a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier, so the kid didn’t scare him.

“Did I say something wrong?” he asked.

“You’re giving Angie the creeps, okay?”

Keeping his voice calm and disarming, Logan said, “Look, I’m a friend of Elyse’s grandfather. He asked me to—”

“I don’t care who you say you are,” the guy said.

He started to close the door, but Logan pushed it back open.

“Buddy, there’s no reason to be rude,” he told the kid.

Several people rushed over from inside, and soon there were two more girls and another guy standing behind Angie.

“What’s going on?” one of them asked.

The plaid shorts guy was staring at Logan. “You leave now, or I call the cops.”

The only explanation Logan could come up with for the guy’s reaction was that he was grandstanding for the girls. “I’m not trying to cause a problem, I just want to ask a few questions.”

 “All right, I’ve had enough.” The kid stepped out of the doorway and into Logan’s personal space. “Get the hell out of—”

Logan could see the fist coming from about two blocks away. As it sailed toward him, he easily guided it upward with his hand, then slipped under the kid’s arm, whacking his shoulder into the idiot’s chest.

The kid’s feet flew out from under him, and he landed, ass first, on the walkway. Shoving him all the way onto his back, Logan placed his leg across the boy’s clavicle, then stared down at him.

“If I lean forward just a little bit, that bone’s going to snap in two, and that’s going to screw you up for quite a while. Do you want that?”

The kid shook his head.

Logan took a look at the doorway. The others were still standing there, their eyes wide in surprise. To the kid he said, “How about we start over? Why don’t you tell me your name?”

A pause, then, “Ryan.”

“All right, Ryan. Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to answer a few questions for me, okay?”

Ryan nodded. “Okay.”

Logan didn’t move. “Are you going to invite me in? It would be a lot better to sit down than do it like this, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, uh, please, let’s go inside.”

“Thanks, Ryan. Now I’m going to get up. So don’t try anything stupid. Again, I mean.”

7

The apartment’s décor screamed college student—a hand-me-down couch, mismatched chairs and tables, and a stack of empty pizza boxes near the kitchen. There was even a leopard print beanbag chair in the corner.

Logan made sure everyone was seated before he pulled over one of the chairs from the dining table and joined them. There was no denying that he was feeling a little annoyed. Not just with Ryan and Angie, but with himself, too. He couldn’t figure out what he’d done to cause their reaction.

Putting on his best nonthreatening smile, he started off by getting the names of the other three. The girls were Maria and Joan, roommates in the apartment directly below Elyse and Angie’s place. The guy’s name was Kenny. He was Maria’s boyfriend, and lived a few miles away.

Still smiling, Logan repeated who he was and why he was there. Joan and Maria seemed to be the first to relax. Kenny was still a bit guarded, but Logan could tell he was also coming around. Angie and Ryan, though, continued to look unhappy.

“You all know Elyse?” Logan asked, focusing most of his attention on Joan, Maria and Kenny.

“Sure,” Maria said. The other two nodded beside her. “She’s a friend of ours.”

“Do you really know Elyse’s grandfather?” Angie asked, more of an accusation than a question.

“I really do.”

“What does she call him?” Joan asked. Unlike Angie, she seemed to genuinely want to hear the answer, and give him a chance.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never met her before. But back home we all call him Tooney.”

“Yes,” she said. “Grandpa Tooney.”

“You could have just guessed that,” Ryan said.

Glancing at each of them in turn, Logan said, “Look, she was supposed to visit Tooney today, but she didn’t show up. He tried calling her. She didn’t answer. So he asked me to come down and make sure everything’s okay. That’s it.”

No one said anything for a moment.

“She…she did tell me she was planning to visit her grandfather today,” Maria offered.

“When did she say that?” Logan asked.

“A day or two ago. I can’t remember exactly.”

He considered this for a moment, then said, “She told Tooney she was going to leave at ten this morning, and be at his place in the afternoon. Does anyone know if that’s when she left?”

Maria shrugged, and shook her head.

“I didn’t see her at all today,” Joan said.

Kenny was also shrugging. “I just came over this evening. Wasn’t even around this morning.”

Logan turned to Angie. “You’re her roommate. Do you know if she left this morning?”

She looked torn, like she wanted to answer and wanted to keep her mouth shut at the same time. Finally, she said, “She…she didn’t come home last night.”

“She didn’t come home?”

“It’s not that unusual.” She turned away, her gaze momentarily falling on Ryan. Logan wasn’t sure, but it seemed like some message passed between them. “Sometimes she spends the night at her boyfriend’s place. I assume that’s what she was doing, and just left from there.”

“Boyfriend?” Maria said, surprised. “When did that happen?”

Angie looked uncomfortable. “Not that long ago.”

“What’s his name?” Logan asked.

She hesitated, then said, “Aaron. Aaron Hughes.”

“Aaron?” Maria stared at Angie in disbelief. “I thought she said she wasn’t interested in him.”

“I guess she changed her mind,” Angie told her, shrugging. “I mean, we didn’t really talk about a lot of things, so I don’t know for sure.”

“Do you have his address? Maybe a phone number?”

She shook her head. “Sorry.”

“I know where he lives,” Joan offered.

Everyone looked at her.

“You know?” Maria asked.

“What?” Joan said, unable to completely hide her embarrassment. “He was hanging out around here a lot. He’s kind of cute, he asked me out, so I said yes. Not a big deal.”

Maria couldn’t hide her distaste. “You went out with him?”

“Just a couple times. You spend all your time at Kenny’s. I get bored.”

“Where does he live?” Logan asked, trying to get her back on track.

“Over in Venice Beach, right on Pacific Avenue. He’s got a little bungalow kind of thing. Tan with a flat roof. You can’t miss it. It’s about a minute’s walk north of Washington Boulevard.”

“Do you know the address?”

“Hold on.” She pulled out her phone. After a moment, she smiled and nodded. “Yeah, I guess I do.” She read it off, and Logan jotted it down in his notebook. He then asked if she had Aaron’s phone number, and she gave him that, too.

“Thanks,” he said, then turned back to Angie. “Her grandfather said she has three roommates. Where are the other two?”

“Laura and Carrie?” Angie said. “They went home for the break.”

“Thanks,” he told her, then looked at Ryan. “See how easy that was. All you had to do was be nice from the beginning, and you’d still have your pride.”

“Whatever,” Ryan replied.

“I’m sure he didn’t mean anything personal,” Maria said. “There’ve been some strange men hanging around the building lately. The guys have taken to watching out for us because of it.”

That would certainly explain why Ryan tried to shut him down so quickly. “What do you mean strange?”

“You know, they show up every once in a while, walk around a little, then just leave,” Joan said. “Kenny tried talking to them once, but they just ignored him.”

“The same guys every time?”

The two girls looked at each other, thinking, then Joan said, “There are four of them, I think.”

“Yeah, but never more than two around at the same time,” Maria added.

“That’s true,” Joan said.

 “Describe them for me.”

“There was one black guy, and the rest were white,” she said.

When she didn’t add any more, Logan asked, “Age?”

“I don’t know. In their thirties, maybe.”

“Anything else? Height? Weight?”

“Around your height, I guess,” Maria told him. “And in good shape. Other than that, nothing stands out.”

Interestingly, it was pretty much the same general way he would have described the guy who’d attacked Tooney that morning. He filed that thought away for later.

Tearing a few pages out of his notebook, he gave each of them his number. “If any of you hear from Elyse, or think of something that might help me, please give me a call right away.”

He then had them each write down their number.

“Thanks,” he said as he stood up. “Sorry to have interrupted your evening.”

“Shouldn’t we call the police?” Joan asked.

Logan couldn’t miss the instant karma of having the same thing he’d said to his father and Tooney thrown back at him. “We don’t even know if there’s anything wrong yet. If there is, I’ll be the first to make the call.”